Joie De Vive

It is unfortunate that in today's society being a housewife is looked down on. Its hard work people! Its hard juggling a house and a child (got multiple children? You have my utmost respect), a healthy relationship with your husband, family and friends and STILL find a way to somehow be yourself and pursue your own interests to a point. Its true that we've come a long way from when women were only expected to be a housewife - having a career was frowned on. The list above clearly states some pretty crazy things as far as I'm concerned. Its crazy talk.

The words "housewife" and "homemaker" carry such negative connotations these days. I'll openly admit, I was (partly am?) one of the people that viewed it was a negative thing. If I heard someone was a "housewife".. I would always assume that they had no aspirations to be anything better or greater, they were "just a housewife". Greater... in my mind there was so much more to life than being a housewife or a homemaker. Just to clarify, I don't include women raising children (especially young kids) in this. I mean women who have no kids and are just staying at home.

To a point I still feel that way, if you have no kids. Why are you home then? Why not be out, working, earning a living, creating an identity for yourself? My parents made the decision when I was born that my mother would graduate college and stay home to take care of me - then came by brother, closely followed by my sister. My mother put her hopes for a career aside to raise three children. For that I have always had the utmost respect but had always decided that was not the path for me.

I was going to be a career woman. I was going to be someone in my own right - have my own identity, my own name. I was going to be someone.

To work towards that goal, I worked my butt off all through college and graduated among the top of my class, swept the awards ceremony clean and immediately got a job at a well known pharma marketing agency. Almost a year later, I got let go and immediately started at a publishing company as a designer. I wasn't the happiest there but I was biding my time till I could open up my own studio OR move to an agency.

Somewhere along the way, we as a couple made the decision that it was now time for us to start a family. Great! A family. In my mind, I could have it all... I could be the working mom that came home to a shiny, clean, diapered happy baby and life would be peaches.

And then things changed.

I changed.

The closer it got to my due date, the more anxious I started feeling. We'd have to leave the baby with daycare people at only 6-8 weeks old. Are you kidding me????? That is just too young! Who would love her and care for her the way I wanted to? I couldn't fathom handing my child over to someone so early after she was born. In fact I remember telling Bizzeth I was terrified that the baby would grow up not recognizing me because she would have grown up in daycare rather than at home with her mama.

I stayed up night after night after night, crying and trying to figure out how things would work themselves out. I spoke it over with lobster and my family at length. My parents supported the idea of me staying at home to raise the baby. Lobster, being the wonderful diplomatic man that he is, told me that I had to decide what would work best for me and he'd support it. In the meantime, we ran around like headless chickens looking at daycares.

We eventually made it far enough into the pregnancy where I had my 3d Ultrasound........ and that was it. The second I saw her little face in that ultrasound I knew I could never leave her at a daycare to be raised by strangers. I knew that my career, my years of hard work, my need to have an independent identity no longer mattered. All I wanted in the world from that point on was to be her mama, to be home when she was and to always be there for her no matter way - even if that meant me giving up a big part of myself.

So here I am. I'm a housewife... a homemaker... a domestic engineer. I prefer to call myself The Minister of Home Affairs and Child Education of our household.

Do I always have dinner ready on the table for when lobster gets home? No.... usually I'm in the middle of feedings or diaper changes when the poor guy gets home. Baby's schedule is all over the place so I have almost no time to myself these days let alone for cooking.

Lobster usually finds me in my pyjamas, hair all over the place, the house a mess and a 5 minute meal quickly thrown together for dinner (on a good day). I am NOT by any means the ideal housewife. I'm still trying to figure out how to be a decent mama... I'll never wear the cutesy little aprons or the leave it to beaver dresses with my hair done, nails manicured and shoes in hand for my husband to wear as soon as he walks in the front door.

Anyone who knows me at all knows that'll never happen, but what I will always do is make sure that we have a happy, healthy, well adjusted child that knows her parents love and adore her... and someday in the future once she's old enough and at school - I'll be able to pick that career of mine up again.

For now.. I'm a full time mama and loving it!